


Sleeping Dragons

by roslindi



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-28
Updated: 2013-01-28
Packaged: 2017-11-27 08:08:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/659729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roslindi/pseuds/roslindi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I regret nothing / Neither the good that I’ve done, nor the bad</p><p>(A long time ago the point man known as ‘Arthur’ was a wizard named Draco Malfoy.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleeping Dragons

In his dreams, Arthur is waiting for a train.

Unlike Cobb and Mal, though, he always knows where the train is going. It’s going to the only place trains ever go in Arthur’s dreams. It’s the same place where all his dreams go.

  


Ariadne calls him on the Tuesday after the Flight-That-Shall-Not-Be-Spoken-Of touches down in L.A. She’s already back in Paris and sounds giddy with exhaustion over the tinny line.

“Listen, I know this is awfully forward and all, but I’m horribly, madly in love with you and I think we should get a place together and have lots of sex and design architectural marvels.”

“Er. I live in L.A.” Arthur stalls for time, staring askance at the mobile, because it has personally betrayed him for not somehow gaining sentience and precognizance in order to warn him this was going to happen.

“I know,” she chirps. “That’s why it’s perfect; I just signed a contract with a firm out there.”

Ah, thank Morgana, Mordred and Circe. The _real_ reason. “And you’re too cheap to spend any of your new, hard-earned money on a place of your own so you want to move in with me,” Arthur says.

“It’s like we’re the same person, Arthur,” she says brightly. “And we don’t have to sex it up, but I’m moving in with you either way.”

Arthur acquiesces, because he does like Ariadne even if she’s the nosiest person he’s ever known (which is saying something), and almost as mercurial in her moods as Mal was (which is saying quite a lot).

Over the next two months, Arthur: turns down four job offers, beats his own high score on Angry Birds thrice, finally manages to bake a decent pound cake, picks up an inordinate number of Ariadne’s shipped belongings from the post office, and almost completely remove any trace of his former identity as Draco Malfoy from his house.

It’s not as though he’s keeping photographs of his family on the living room bookshelves, but Ariadne is as curious as a cat and twice as wily—he does not doubt that she is going to be searching under the flooring at some point, eventually. So Arthur gathers the few personal items he had brought with him from England and ventures into magical San Francisco one Saturday to add them to his lock box at Gringott’s. After that, the only magical item remaining in his house is his wand, which he keeps near him at all times. He hasn’t used it in years except to renew his hair dye charm, but that’s no reason to be stupid.

 

Ariadne arrives at the house in a riotous whirl of hipster scarves and half-formed sketches two days earlier than she led him to believe she would.

Arthur scowls. “I would have met you at the airport,” he tells her, paying off the cab driver.

Ariadne shrugs, dumping her carry-on in his arms. “Spontaneity is going to keep our relationship fresh.”

“You invited yourself to move into my house; we aren’t even in a relationship.”

She pats his cheek. “All the more reason to start good habits while we’re ahead.”

“That makes no sense. That makes a negative amount of sense.”

“Just help me get my crap inside.”

Arthur does so, giving her the quick tour on the way to what was formerly his perpetually unused guestroom, and is now her bedroom. The boxes she sent over are all there, still unpacked because Ariadne can move into his house, but she can’t make him help her do it (of course, she does make him help).

In celebration, they eat out at the local Japanese place that night. He mocks her pronunciation after she orders and she furtively flicks bits of rice at his hair when she thinks no one but him will notice. It’s nice, _pleasant_. And Arthur gets a twist of unwanted nostalgia from the outing. It’s been a long time since he was really _friends_ with anyone—work colleagues, Cobb and Mal, even Eames not counting for myriad reasons. He has trouble believing he’s finding this familiar ease now, in Ariadne, of all places.

Mother would have an elf fetch her salts if she saw him now.

 

Life settles into a pattern over the next few weeks. Arthur stays in L.A., having sworn off mind-crime for the time being (though he privately realizes it’s a matter of weeks, not years, until he’s itching to go back under). He has more than enough money to never work again (ever), and he fills his days with quietly keeping up with the dreamshare community and acting as an interim nanny to Phillipa and James Cobb (only until he finds a viable candidate, he assures Cobb). Ariadne stumbles out of the house in various grey suit-skirt monstrosities in the mornings, and Arthur figures it’s only a matter of time until she, too, returns to mind-crime.

 _It’s addictive_ , he warned her once. He’d left off _Once you’re really in, you can never truly get out_. Ariadne’s a sharp woman. She can grasp that concept without his prompting; no need to pontificate.

 

“So what’s up with you and Eames?” asks Ariadne as they shove at each other for the prime TV-viewing spot on the sofa.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Arthur says, and digs his fingers under her thighs in an effort to roll her out of the place she’s managed to entrench herself. Somehow, she does a limp-noodle, boneless maneuver that manages to make her impossibly heavy to shift even though she’s maybe 110 lbs.

“Give it up, loser, this is my cushion!” And then, “And you know exactly what I mean, _darling_.”

Arthur decides to stop attempting to move his juvenile housemate (his revenge will be swift and unexpected) and settle on the incredibly comfortable and expensive, but still less well positioned, chaise. “I really don’t know Ariadne. Please, by all means, enlighten me.”

“You are his lady-love,” she elaborates. “Yours is an epic romance, pre-destined by the star—ow!” He pinches her thigh in a move that is both entirely childish and effective. “You know I’m only going to mock you harder now, right?” Ariadne says.

Arthur glowers at her. “Whatever.”

The thing is, Arthur hasn’t heard from or of Eames since shortly after the Fischer Job, and that is not upsetting. At. All. It is odd, though. Normally, Eames keeps himself a little closer to the inner workings of the seedier side of dream-share. But not having any new information could mean almost anything: he could be on a job, or taking an extended vacation like Arthur, or even going legit. With Eames one never knows.

 

The vacation/swearing-off-of-dreamshare lasts until the morning both James and Phillipa throw up on Arthur’s shoes because Cobb’s (rightful) massive guilt had (wrongfully) allowed them to have ice cream sundaes for dinner and then breakfast.

Arthur manages to get James down for a nap, and Philippa on the sofa watching The Frog Princess, before he sends a series of increasingly vitriolic texts to Cobb. Cobb has good sense to respond in apologetic emoticons instead of calling to let Arthur whisper-yell at him.

At this point, Arthur summarily decides that the duties of a godfather do not actually extend this far, and pulls out his carefully annotated dossiers to review nannies again.

Ariadne checks in after naptime, mostly out of boredom, and he tells her he’s going to hire someone and find a job himself.

“Take me with you,” she begs. “They’re trying to make me go on a teambuilding fishing retreat. _I do not fish_.”

“I’ll find something for you.” He frowns. “Does this mean you’re not going to be staying with the firm?”

She sighs at him. “Arthur.”

He won’t ask again. He gets it, he really does. That kind of power is difficult to move beyond.


End file.
